Votruba's Legacy

NKU’s president retires in wake of university’s expansion and growth.

Daniel C. Sewell

Glimmering Legacy

NKU’s Votruba “Re-Wiring” Not Retiring

As monuments to a legacy go, it’s a spectacular one.

Northern Kentucky University’s new Griffin Hall is a
modernistic blend of glimmering steel, glass, wood, and colorful,
environmentally friendly lighting, rising five floors on one side and
wrapped on another with a two-story “Digitorium” — a high-tech
auditorium dominated by a giant screen.

It’s the home of NKU’s College of Informatics, a
blending of different professional fields — business, communications,
computing, health care, and media mobility — at a center of digital-age
information study that’s one of only a half dozen in the nation.

University President James Votruba calls it a defining achievement for the school on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River.

“Over my 15 years as president of NKU, I don’t think
there is a single development that exceeds the creation of the College
of Informatics and Griffin Hall in its ability to impact students and
our region, and that’s a big deal,” Votruba says.

It also underscores the hallmark of Votruba’s tenure, which will end with this academic year next spring.

He has helped transform NKU from community college beginnings
with such pragmatic vision; making sure the school is relevant to what
students — and the region’s businesses and communities — need.

That’s one reason NKU enrollment has grown from
fewer than 12,000 students to 16,000, while adding 42 master’s or
graduate certificate programs for a total of 49. Faculty, budgets and
endowments have all also swelled. It’s also a reason why Votruba got a
warm standing ovation at a recent Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce
dinner.

The president is quick to credit Provost Gail Wells
and other deans and professors at NKU for developing the college that
began six years ago. It grew out of studies early in Votruba’s
presidency into promising areas for future focus.

Talk of engineering as a field to explore faded in
favor of informatics. Votruba admits he first had to learn what
“informatics” is, but he was quickly on board as regional business
leaders talked about the need for “hybrid” professionals who were adept
at making comprehensive use of the exploding amount of information in
multiple ways.

“We had this vision that informatics was the way to
go,” says Kevin Kirby, interim dean of the college. “We were a young and
agile institution without a lot of entrenched opinions . . . so we
could go ahead and do it.

“Informatics as we use it here is an umbrella term
that unites all the disciplines that deal with information; that’s
everything from journalism to software engineering from public relations
to business intelligence ... electronic health care records for
hospitals and insurance companies,” explains Kirby. “They are all areas
important to the region’s economy and they are all areas where these
students will get jobs.”

Master’s student Emily Crawford, 22, from Clermont
County in Ohio, has become proficient in computer security, helping
businesses fight hackers and viruses through NKU’s Center for Applied
Informatics, which pairs students on projects needed by companies and
communities. Among the projects have been developing information kiosks
for the regional TANK public transportation system, doing IT assessments
for nonprofits to help them apply for grants, Web design and content
managements, and writing iPhone applications.

There’s already a student-developed iPhone app that
can help save lives. The app developed first two years ago for the San
Ramon, Calif., fire department and set to be soon used by Erlanger,
Ky.’s department, tracks those qualified to use CPR, so if a 911 call
goes out, everyone in the immediate area who has registered will be
notified, enabling someone nearby to begin helping the victim.

“It has absolutely changed my life,” Crawford says
of the experience she is gaining at NKU. “I was doing well in my
classes, but I didn’t have any real world experience. By the time I’m
done with grad school, I will have that on my resume when I go searching
for my first job.”

With backing from media company E.W. Scripps, whose
CEO Rich Boehne is an NKU alumnus, the college also aims to produce
journalists ready for the fast-evolving field that is moving away from
newsprint to digital formats, by embedding their journalism studies amid
students and professors with areas of other expertise.

“What better place to be for journalism?” asks Chris
Strobel, an associate professor of electronic media and broadcasting.
By design, Griffin Hall facilitates a mixing of disciplines, with
faculty offices interspersed and corridors dotted with informal huddle
areas. “Coming out of different rooms and talking about ideas and
hearing those ideas; someone comes out of a speech communications class
and talks with someone from a computer class, they find cross-overs
there,” Strobel says.

And the college welcomes those who want to learn what Informatics can do for them.
“Griffin
Hall is a giant toy that we’re inviting other students, faculty, people
in the community to come play with,” Kirby says.

“It’s just so exciting for me,” Votruba says. “We’re positioning this university well for the changing world.”

Votruba hopes to keep NKU moving ahead in his last year. “I love the work; I have for 15 years.”

At 66, he is looking forward to having more time
with his wife and family, which includes three children and six
grandchildren, then move from organization leadership to what he hopes
will be intellectual leadership. He expects to focus on increasing ties
to the university with K-12 education, and to help advise future
leaders.